THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 18, 1994 TAG: 9408170141
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover story
SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 151 lines
MORRIS PORTER works for peanuts.
Not little peanuts, like the ones farmers grow in Georgia, Alabama, Texas or other peanut butter-producing states.
We're talking big peanuts. The ballpark kind. The ones you buy roasted in the shell, or in a can of cocktail nuts.
The Virginia peanut - that's Porter's specialty.
At least for now.
Since 1966, Porter has headed up the USDA peanut unit, a team of scientists at the Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Suffolk, researching, studying and developing new varieties of the Virginia peanut.
Financed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the group has overseen a 50 percent increase in Virginia's and North Carolina's peanut production the past two decades.
They have developed systems to warn farmers about frost and disease. They have created new seed varieties, to produce bigger and better nuts and make more money for the growers.
One program, which calculates when farmers need to use fungicide, is credited with saving area growers as much as $3.5 million a year by preventing wasteful spraying.
You could say that Porter's Peanut Production, Disease and Harvesting Research Unit in Suffolk has faced every challenge the beloved goobers could muster.
But now the center seems to have met its match - the federal budget.
There isn't room in the ever-tightening federal checkbook to pay the $600,000 annual cost of Virginia peanut research, Clinton administration officials say. The Suffolk center is one of 19 USDA research units in the country slated to close Sept. 30.
Virginia senators and representatives on Capitol Hill vow to fight to keep the research center alive. But short of that, Porter and his colleagues won't be working for peanuts much longer.
``It came as a complete surprise,'' said Porter, director of the Suffolk research center.
``We can't understand it. I guess I'll die wondering about why - why us?''
``But I guess I know the answer: Why not us? They need to cut the budget.''
The eight-person peanut unit is only one of several programs at the Suffolk complex, an agricultural research and extension center run by Virginia Tech and established in 1914. But it is the only one in the country tasked with studying the Virginia peanut and nothing else.
There are three major peanut-producing regions in the country. The two largest - the Southeast and the Southwest - grow small-seed varieties used mostly for peanut butter.
But the kind of peanuts you buy by the bag and crack out of the shell - Virginia peanuts - are grown only in the Virginia/North Carolina region, the smallest of the big three.
Since 1951, the Suffolk Peanut Unit has worked with Virginia Tech scientists to make the Virginia variety better. And Porter thinks it has been a success.
For instance, the average yield per acre in Virginia was 1,540 pounds of peanuts in 1950. It's nearly 3,000 pounds now, not counting drought years.
In the 1960s, researchers studying a deadly rot that was killing plants learned it was made worse by cultivating the soil. They told farmers to use an herbicide that reduced cultivation, and the rot hasn't been a problem since.
In 1971, a disease called ``Leafspot'' had farmers spraying their crops six or seven times a year, costing about $1 million per spraying statewide.
But Suffolk researchers figured out those sprayings were only effective during certain weather conditions, and started issuing advisories. They reduced the number of sprayings to just two or three a year, saving millions of dollars.
``It's an integral part of our being,'' said Robert Taylor, who started farming his Isle of Wight peanut farm in the late 1940s.
``The people in this area are really going to take a licking,'' he said. ``It makes you wonder about the future.''
The Suffolk unit still monitors weather and issues frost warnings while continuing research in genetics and pathology. Porter says peanut research is a never-ending battle.
New diseases always have to be fought, he said. Changing consumer tastes always have to be met.
The only breeder in the country trying to develop new varieties of Virginia peanuts is in Suffolk. Currently, he's battling two diseases called Cylindrocladium Black Rot and Sclerotinia Blight.
Georgia has a peanut breeder, but he works on small-seed peanuts and spends all his time trying to best a disease called Aflatoxin. Virginia farmers don't have Aflatoxin problems.
``They have their diseases, and we have ours,'' said Glen Heuberger, director of the Virginia Tech center, which works in cooperation with the USDA peanut center.
``A breeder in Georgia works on problems in Georgia,'' Heuberger said. ``That's why we don't want to lose ours. It's a major impact.''
Just last year, the USDA approved a new $145,000 building at the center for storing and shelling nuts. A contract was signed and construction began in the fall.
Porter got word last February that the center was targeted to be closed, and the building was completed a few months later. It has been empty ever since.
There are 122 USDA research centers in the country, but federal officials are trying to pare the number to 100.
So when President Clinton introduced his 1995 budget, the Suffolk center was not in it.
When the farmers found out, they went to work.
Through organizations like the Farm Bureau and the Peanut Growers Marketing Association, peanut farmers started lobbying members of Congress.
Rep. Norman Sisisky, D-4th, tried to save the Suffolk program in the House of Representatives, but failed. Sens. John Warner and Chuck Robb almost saved it in the Senate, but then a last-minute amendment was passed giving the secretary of agriculture the power to kill specific programs himself, which would likely mean the center's demise.
Most suspect the Senate version will ultimately prevail, so Heuberger said the last hope is that Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy will have a change of heart. Otherwise, the Suffolk center would close Sept. 30, and the eight workers would be relocated or offered early retirement.
Heuberger tries to be optimistic.
``It's an important program - one we would really like to see survive,'' said Heuberger.
``If it doesn't, the peanut farmers won't all go out of business. We'll keep trying to help.
``But a lot of good research will never be finished,'' he said. ``It'll have an effect.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photo by JOHN SHEALLY II
Morris Porter, left, research and plant pathologist at the research
center, and center director Glen Heuberger confer in the laboratory.
[This photo appeared on Page One]
Staff photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
A team of scientists researches, studies and develops new varieties
of the Virginia peanut at the Tidewater Agricultural Research Center
in Holland. ``It's an important program - one we'd like to see
survive,'' says research director Glen Heuberger.
Morris Porter, head of Suffolk's USDA peanut unit, works in the
center's lab.
Porter and Glen Heuberger of Virginia Tech walk past the new
$145,000 building at the center designed for the storing and
shelling of peanuts. The building is complete but has never been
used. Unless efforts to save it succeed, the center will close Sept.
30.
Morris Porter experiments with a peanut culture. ``A lot of good
research will never be finished,'' he says.
by CNB